


The Nature of Addiction

by MadamMortis



Series: The Three Stages [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Eventual Romance, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2020-10-09 03:57:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20488289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadamMortis/pseuds/MadamMortis
Summary: 1967. The powers below have charged Crowley with fomenting a bit of general enthusiasm regards the use of illicit drugs. In a time in which the human race really didn't require much in the means of encouragement. Never one to do a job poorly (if he can help it) Crowley decides to roll up his sleeves (pun intended) and conduct a bit of research into what exactly he is being asked to sell. Aziraphale is, as always, stuck dealing with the fallout.Just a little drabble that came to mind after some interesting discussion in my workplace re drug addiction.





	1. Drug Puddling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ira_Dunfort](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ira_Dunfort/gifts).

> The idea for this came to me some time ago, drifted out of focus and then drifted on back over the last couple of days. As I felt some excitement for writing it, I have decided that it would serve perfectly as a gift to my dear friend Ira, as some modest thanks for the lovely stories that she had previously gifted to me. I hope that you enjoy it :) 
> 
> This story is going to be just a simple little now three part series and serves as an offshoot to The Three Stages universe but can obviously be read alone. In case it wasn't at all obvious, there are some pretty heavy themes concerning drug use in this chapter and some specific references to drug taking/administration. It's supposed to be in somewhat good humour (considering it's Crowley doing the taking of) but just a fair warning to all those reading that some of this stuff might be potentially triggering and or a little disturbing. 
> 
> I do not endorse nor condemn the taking of drugs nor make light of the terrible nature of addiction. Addiction does comprise a great deal of the industry in which I work and I mean to approach the issue with some sensitivity. Whilst still... enjoying the concept of Crowley getting high and doing stupid shit.
> 
> Take care of yourself as always, my lovely beans :) 
> 
> So without further ado, have a story!

_**~** **London Soho~** _

_ **Swinging ** **1967** _

Aziraphale considered himself to be an angel of rather modest expectations.

He supposed it a rather simple thing really, to have modest expectations when one wasn’t required to delay gratification in any way shape or form. That was one of the novelties of _being _an angel. If he desired the finest seat in the finest restaurant in town, it was a simple matter of willing said seat empty and keeping it so until he graced the business with his presence.

With divine magic at his disposal, one wasn’t visited by disappointment so often. He was fortunate like that, he acknowledged. Humans of course had a far more difficult time of things. If they desired a fine seat in an even more fine a restaurant, their journey was paved with much greater obstacles. It might take a phone call, some months in advance, even. It might take the knowing of a particular person. And then there was the expense. Not everyone had six thousand years worth of scraping and saving and pinching (where required) at their disposal.

So, yes. Aziraphale had modest expectations. As modest as the expectations of an angel can be reasonably expected, that is.

He had his bookshop. He had his books. His fine wine, his dinners out to some of the more esteemed eateries in the greater London area. He had the company of his dear friend and hereditary enemy Crowley and the conversation garnered from the meeting of two distinctly clever (and sometimes really rather gloriously arbitrary) minds.

One of Aziraphale’s rather modest expectations was, however, to not have the dingy back room of his bookshop turned into a drug den.

A ‘den of iniquity’, he had more colourfully described it, using a few other more suitable and floral terms as Crowley had taken to lining up his distasteful purchases upon his antique table like some tremulous soldiers preparing themselves for discharge.

“I’m not turning it into a den.” Crowley established, thinking rather the wryly to himself that old rooms tucked into the back of even older bookshops required little assistance in being established as some manner of ‘den’. “I just need a safe place to do this, where _someone responsible_-” He gestured to Aziraphale with a silver spoon what would feature prominently in the doing of the aforementioned ‘this’. “-that’s where _you_ come in- can keep an eye on me. I can’t very well do this at home! I don’t know how this stuff is going to affect me. What if a service person comes around? I might be so out of my gourd I could just up and let them and their ‘big wrench’ have their way with me. No, it’s got to happen _here_.”

“I wonder why in fact it needs to happen at all.” Aziraphale said, wondering as he did just why Crowley had so many pathological hang ups concerning service people. He had explained it once, but Aziraphale hadn’t really been listening. Something to do with late night television and enthusiastically vocal human copulation…

“The powers to be from down yonder are really pushing this stuff. Want me to do more tempting regards it. Get the poor sods well and hooked.” Crowley placed several sealed plastic bags of variously shaped and coloured substances down upon the table. He’d been required to visit some progressively shady humans in ever the more shady corners and alleys of the shadiest subset of the Soho area in order to get his hands on the ‘goods’. Or ‘bads’, really. Made for an interesting day, at least. “Addicted humans do a fair whack of shifty stuff to meet their ‘needs’. Permeates a wave of overall dissent through society. Gets a finger in every little pie, you get my drift. Stealing, missing work, smack ups, break ups, families torn apart-”

“Yes, yes. I’m well aware.” Aziraphale said, somewhat testily. His nose felt strained from his having kept it derisively wrinkled the past five minutes.

“Give it another thirty-forty years and there won’t even _need_ to be an apocalypse. Not one that our lot need to get involved in anyway. Humans’ll destroy themselves from the inside out.”

“How lovely.”

“Well, it’s hardly _lovely_. Business, you understand. Nothing personal.”

“Yes, I _get_ all that. I do. I take no issue with your doing the job what is asked of you.” Aziraphale hesitated a moment before dropping down into the chair opposite that in which Crowley was currently installed. He watched as the demon inconclusively examined a plastic wrapped syringe in such a way which left little doubt as to his being entirely unfamiliar with it. “I just… I fail to see how you filling your body with this…_ poison_ is intended to be in the best interests of executing your duties.”

Crowley set down the syringe, rather grateful for the excuse to do so. His own nose had developed a tell-tale wrinkle about the nostrils, reminiscent of Aziraphale at his best.

“What’s that old quote about ignorance, angel?”

“The one by William Shakespeare? ‘Ignorance being the curse of God’ or some such thing?”

“No, not that one. That one by Martin Luther King. ‘Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.’”

“Well, I hardly see why you felt the need to _ask_ if you already knew what you were going to say.” Aziraphale remarked, with the cantankerous air of one whom, when graced with the opportunity to sound enlightened had failed at doing so. “And besides, that’s hardly an old quote. Martin Luther King is still alive. Still quoting.”

“It’ll be old one day. The quote, I mean. _Everything_ will be old one day. 'cept for us.”

“Old in mind.”

“Old in clothing. When are you ever going to shift into the twentieth century anyway, angel? There’s tons of different things to wear now. Things with zippers.” Crowley made a mocking fish like gasp of excitement, similar to the genuine expression he had formed in 1917 when he had in fact discovered his very first zip.

Aziraphale gave Crowley an onerous look. “Here now. Don’t you go lecturing me about supposed poor life choices, you old serpent. Not when you’re sitting here on the cusp of cooking what few functioning brain cells you still have at your _limited _disposal.”

“Which brings me back to the point I was trying to make. About the whole ‘ignorance’ thingy.” Crowley poked the corner of the syringes packet so that it lined up with all his other recently purchased drug taking paraphernalia. He gave a little shudder whilst doing so. Sharps were vile. “I’m not prepared to go about bandying the benefits of toking, shooting, snorting or… whatever else it is what humans do to get this stuff into their system, without the knowing as to _why_. How can I successfully tempt when I haven’t the foggiest as to how any of this is supposed to be in some way appealing?”

“I find that a poor argument.” Aziraphale said, brow furrowing. “You were, if you recall, quite efficient in tempting the Emperor Caligula into performing any number of otherwise salacious acts without any first hand knowledge as to why he might have wanted to do so.”

Crowley slapped a hand to the tabletop firmly, sending the items once so neatly aligned into temporary disarray. “No! As I’ve told you, _countless times over_, I was only ever responsible for the building of that ridiculous floating bridge! The overspending, the orgies, the… incest, that was all him!”

Humans, as Crowley repeatedly and ever more agitatedly reminded an oft times unconvinced Aziraphale, required very little in the means of tempting. They were far more creative, passionate and devious than most any average Jo-Blow of Hell could so much as hope to be. Hell, Crowley often reasoned in his more quiet of moments, could easily take a good old step back from earthly interference and safely leave humanity to its own devices without fear of Heaven getting a solid leg up in the universal chess game. Mankind was both intent on and ever so adept at pursuing its own destruction.

“Well, not Caligula then. But take sex for example.”

_Would that I could_, Crowley thought to himself, flashing back briefly to a conversation hosted front seat of his Bentley some weeks earlier and concluded by the words “You go too fast for me, Crowley.” Not nearly so fast as he might have otherwise liked, that’s for sure.

“You tempt humans towards all manner of sexual based debauchery. Day in, day out.”

“Not day in, day out.” Crowley pulled a face. “Don’t say that like sexual based debauchery is my particular _domaine d’expertise_.”

“Don’t speak French! You know how I _hate_ it when you speak French!” In all honesty, Aziraphale only hated Crowley speaking French because it was a smug reminder as to his own insufficiency regards multi-lingual skill sets. It was something peculiar about his mind; the inability to retain a grasp of any language of which he wasn’t habitually speaking. Crowley on the other hand could tempt, deride and goad in more languages than there was hair on his head. It was a fact what never ceased to aggravate the angel. “My point being is that if you are able to espouse the values of an act in which you have never before engaged and successfully invite humans to then partake, then I can hardly see why you feel the need to dabble in this particular... area.”

_I would dabble in the_ other_ particular area, if someone would loosen his bow-tie and iron the starch out of his denial for five minutes,_ Crowley thought and then congratulated himself on being clever enough to have not said such a thing out loud. He substituted instead with: “Because sex from what I can glean my celestial friend, is considered by most to be a predominantly enjoyable act. Given consent, mutual meeting of passions, compatibility, durability, longevity, so on and so forth.” He threw in the so forth as a sort of mercy concerns Aziraphale, who was beginning to look a little hot around the collar by the associate connotations of the words. “And sex isn’t the exclusive property of Hell, you know that. You’ve done your own fair share of encouraging on behalf of your side all these years and don’t pretend otherwise. Sowing seeds of love what blossom into a fervent desire for a raging entanglement of sweaty limbs, tongues tangling like a pair of amorous snakes, skin so slippery it’s like trying to hold onto an angry dolphin. I’ve got your number, you old sauce pot.”

“Sauce pot- I’m not a…_ sauce pot_!” Aziraphale insisted, cheeks broaching a shade of red aspired to by the very ripest of Roma tomatoes. It wasn’t the least helped by Crowley’s thinly veiled snorts of amusement to himself and the angel extracted himself from his seat with a fussy snort of contempt. “Very well. I see there is nothing for it. If you so insist on puddling in this font of stupidity I shall do my part in preventing you from drowning in it. Just make well and sure that you clean up after yourself and that none of this-“ He flicked an irritant finger towards the pile of illicit substances. “- is left behind. I do have a business to run.”

“Ah yes. And a fine reputation to uphold.” Said Crowley ironically, the both of them well aware of Aziraphale’s steadfast determination in never having to sell a book if he could otherwise avoid it. “You peddle you wares with the efficiency of a legless bicyclist, you do.”

“You are making this unpleasantness ever the more impossible to accommodate with good humour.”

“If this is 'good humour', I’d hate to see your impression of, at best, ‘curmudgeony tolerance’.” And because Aziraphale was looking ever the closer to wresting Crowley out by the scruff of his mock turtleneck, the demon dialled back on his teasing. “All right, I’ve had my fun. Thank you for your accommodation, you are a veritable lamb of god and a sterling example to which all feathered likes of your kin ought aspire yet never hopeth to breach.”

“Keep talking and you shall soon find something ‘breaching’ you in a location you will find most difficult to accommodate.” Aziraphale muttered, missing the look of somewhat dubious intrigue what took up shop in Crowley’s face. The small bell above the front door jingled, alerting the angel to the presence of yet another begrudged presence he would spend the next however how long attempting to waylay from making an actual purchase. “With any luck this might be my last customer for the day. Might I ask that if there is anything you wish to… smoke, that you do so outside.” He held up a cautionary finger. “Do not make a nuisance of yourself.”

“Groovy.” Crowley replied, for this was a word that was popular at the time and he was very much a demon of whatever time in which he found himself. “Mind if I borrow your phone real quick? Kill some time while your eleventh-hour customer does their milling?”

“What do you need the phone for?” Aziraphale asked, reappearing from the kitchenette with a tin of biscuits he would offer whatever customers managed to infiltrate his store. Just because he abhorred their presence was hardly cause to be a rude host.

“Just local. One or two odd low level evil jobs I’ve been meaning to get round to.” He effected a pout, knowing full well it was a means of getting his way when the bug eyed puppy dog gaze was not available to him. “Won’t be long.”

Aziraphale sighed, won over not so much by the pouting (however much Crowley would like to pretend otherwise) but a more fervent need to get on out into the shop proper and provide some much needed distraction so as to prevent his customer being able to partake of any would-be custom.

“Very well. Just don’t tie up the line all afternoon. I still have to take orders, you know.”

“Cheers.” Crowley said, easing himself up out of his seat and strutting over to settle into the well worn indent of Aziraphale’s study chair. He picked up the ancient rotary phone, (ancient even so far as 1967 was concerned) set it on the desk by his elbow and dialled a number. As it rang, a niggling thought from earlier crossed the busy highway of his mind and he set the speaker portion of the phone to his chest just long enough to address it. “Question. What on earth does ‘puddling’ mean?”

“It’s that thing ducks do when they stick their heads underwater. Looking for bugs, or whatever it is ducks look for.” Aziraphale said distractedly, searching for the napkins he dispensed alongside the biscuits. It wouldn’t do at all to have crumbs burying themselves in the gallows of his books.

Crowley raised a well groomed eyebrow. “And _that_ was the first analogy what came to mind, is it? Me, head down, arse up, puddling in drugs?”

Aziraphale had thought the comparison rather clever and did not at all appreciate it being turned around so as to sound somewhat… tawdry. “Just… make your phone call, _please._”

“Right you are.” Crowley said, smiling lightly for the minute degree of internal dissent he had caused the angel. His call was picked up and so he turned his attention, shame that it was, to work related matters. “Good afternoon. This is Frederick Anders calling from Energy Savers Solutions. I was hoping I might have some of your time to speak with you about the convenience and long term savings of roof mounted solar panels.”

“Truly the devil’s work.” Aziraphale murmured with a nonetheless fond smile, eliciting a mischievous wink from Crowley in return.

**~X~**

Having spent the remainder of the afternoon converting otherwise cavalier residents of London into fuming cesspools of low grade irritation (taken out on the likes of spouses, pet gerbils and house plants alike) the demon Crowley took time enough in which to pat himself on the back, before applying himself to the indisputably more important work of the day. That of binging like a music festival enthusiast on a cocktail of illicit substances, each progressively more the mind fucking than the last.

Crowley did in fact adopt a rather professional approach to the task. He had a little notebook in which he detailed his observations, experiences and awarded a ranking to each substance out of ten. (It might have been something of a biased scoring system but he rather doubted Aziraphale’s willingness to offer himself up as a control group).

This notebook did in fact feature extensively in a rather laughter fuelled drinking session some decades into the future, where Crowley and Aziraphale had acquired just enough carnal knowledge of one another to render the demon’s honest observations as charming. Crowley had kept the notebook under wraps until such a time, knowing that the things he had written there pertained to some rather overt feelings he had been nursing for the angel. Things of which Aziraphale would have likely found shocking were he to stumble upon them in times prior to their having realized just how much fun clothes free activities were.

Crowley created a little ladder; starting with what he felt was to be the weakest of the drug experiences and working his way up from there. What follows is an extraction from Crowley’s notebook, detailing the ridiculous happenings of his ‘drug puddlings’ (as he would now and forever refer to it):

**Drug 1: Yellow marker pen**.  
Notes: Took cap off, took a whiff. No observable changes. Smelt okay. Got yellow mark on nose, does not pair well with brooding aesthetic. Better utilized for original purpose in amending spelling mistakes in office memos (as evidenced likely throughout) **1/10**

**Drug 2: Unleaded petrol.**  
Notes: Marks the second time in which I have in fact purchased petrol. Do love that bullet hole sticker. Heard that petrol sniffing is more something the adolescent humans get into. Bit of a head spin, nothing to write Hell about. Got a dressing down from Aziraphale (not the good kind, sadly) about stinking out the back room of the bookshop. Did not appreciate honest observation that bookshop smells pretty funky most of the time anyway. Bentley would likely appreciate more than me. **2/10**

**Drug 3: Cannabis.**  
Note: Gateway drug. Otherwise known as marijuana, mary jane, Mexican lawn clippings, dope, grass, whacky tobaccy, hash, blaze, dinkie dow, gunga, hooch, pot, reefer (_He had admittedly gotten a little distracted in trying to recall all the various names he had heard for cannabis over his long years on earth_). Debated as to whether to smoke it as a rollie (blunt) or to use a quote/unquote bong. Figured I’d gone to the effort of purchasing said bong, so why not? Smoked it out in Aziraphale’s courtyard area. Hard to look cool while sucking back smoke from a pipe with orange fluorescent swirls woven through the substandard glasswork. Woman from back shop out hanging laundry at time, gave me funny look. Not reassured by friendly wave and colloquial offer of ‘Good afternoon’. Aziraphale received phone call shortly thereafter. First insisted didn’t know me, then insisted bong was for medicinal purposes. Denial = Not just river in Egypt.

Was anticipating what humans refer to as ‘getting the giggles’ and the ‘munchies’ phase. Got neither. Apparently, I prescribe to the ‘paranoid’ camp of reefer smokers. Spent ten minutes insisting someone was stomping about upstairs before realizing it was the sound of my heart clanging about in my chest. Thought Aziraphale was looking at me funny. Asked _why_ he was looking at me funny. Reassured that he was_ not_ in fact looking at me funny. Made Aziraphale uncomfortable by long winded discussion concerning whether new haircut was flattering or not. Became suddenly and unaccountably emotional by lack of conviction concerns new haircut. Cried in bathroom for ten minutes, revaluated all life choices. Came up wanting. Cried some more. Flushed that shit out of my system right quick. Not at all grouse. **0/10** Did _not_ like. Fail to understand the fascination.

**Drug 4: Ecstasy.**  
Notes: Bad choice. Bad, bad,_ bad_ choice. Probably didn’t help that I took two tablets. One would have been enough. More than enough. Hornier than I’ve ever been in my entire life. Hornier than all combined experiences of being horny in over six thousand years of progressive horniness. Grateful no service people around, might have been susceptible to ‘drain corking’. Offered sex to Aziraphale no less than seven times. Offers were summarily declined. (It’s the haircut, right? Got to be. Maybe I’ll grow it out again, get a moustache. They’re very in these days. Won’t be able to resist offers of sex with a moustache). Undeterred, attempted to dry hump Aziraphale through back of bookcase anyway. Got a slap to the face for efforts. Only razzed me up more. Took suspiciously long shower in attempt to cool off. Masturbated like a frantic baboon. Erection still not gone down after twenty-five minutes. Aziraphale likely to file restraining order. Zapped drug from my system. Might be fun with willing, consenting partner rather than put-upon angelic book keeper. Not so much with would be rapists or adamant, prolific serial-stalkers. Would recommend to friends and family, **8/10** (Only take the one though. _Seriously_)

**Drug 5: Cocaine.**  
Notes: Can I hear a ‘wahoo’? No? Fine, I’ll just wahoo it myself then. Off to a bit of a rocky start. Mustn’t have cut line fine enough, got a clod stuck up my right nostril. Aziraphale forced to administer Heimlich manoeuvre. Grateful this was not required for aforementioned ecstasy experience. Would have ended up far the messier than it arguable already was.

Far the more enjoyable than disgusting cannabis. Apparently, pupils got very dilated. Freaked Aziraphale right out. Feelings of euphoria, confidence and rapture. Some horniness detected but far the more readily wrangled than two ill advised chocked tablets of ecstasy. Sang a couple of Aria’s with self-perceived brilliant standards (Aziraphale likened to the shrill screeching of a cat having something inopportunely inserted into an ill prepared orifice) danced the gavotte like an absolute pro (the only time in the entire exercise in which Aziraphale deigned to participate) and rhapsodised on about the greater meaning of the universe and all creatures great and <strike>smoke</strike>_ small_ therein. Probably not a bad one to push, all things considered. **8/10** (Extra point for the Heimlich manoeuvre. Might have pretended I was choking a lot longer than I actually was. No snitching, yeah?)

**Drug 6: LSD**  
Notes: Time to drop some acid. Or rather, stick a tab on my tongue and see what happens. One minute in thought I saw the unicorn from Mesopotamia galloping across the bookstore. Attempted to ride it to the safety of the Ark. Was apparently riding the back of the settee, screaming ‘Gallop faster you beautiful old nag, the water’s rising higher!’ Brushed Aziraphale’s hair for ten minutes with the back of a brush whilst referring to him as a ‘Pretty, pretty, little chinchilla.’ Saw books floating about in mid air. Apparently real, Aziraphale was just doing some sorting. Spaced out over how ‘beautiful’ the pink marshmallow in his cocoa was. Cried in bathroom for fifteen minutes over the transient nature of beauty itself and the inevitability of all eventually falling into disrepair and dust. Eschewed magic mushrooms. Probably more of the same nonsense. Probably fun for humans; they don’t get the opportunity to see the messed up shit that we do. Not really a novelty, so far as a demon’s concerned though. **4/10**

**Drug 7: Heroin**.  
Notes: The _really_ yucky stuff. Humans are disgusting. Awful, _dreadful_ thing sharps. Primo so far as inoculations and vaccinations go and the like; _horrible_ where drugs are concerned.  
Could not figure out for eternal life of me how to administer. Aziraphale no help. Went about as white as his hair at the thought alone. Tried tying cord around arm to get a vein up inside elbow. Nearly fainted at sight of vein alone. Attempted to administer in between toes. Did faint. Woke up to cold water being splashed on face. In a bid to avoid would be further damage, Aziraphale finally conceded to assisting. Almost threw up dinner as result. Managed inside elbow. Yuck. Stings. Just... yucky overall. Feelings of euphoria, confidence and the like hardly worth all the effort. Some assembly required. Mixing in spoon, heating up, filling needle, putting needle in vein. Lot of work. Easier to snort line of coke. (Gotta accrue some points for getting an angel to inject heroin, however. Might be a commendation if we weren’t, as he would say, _fraternizing_)  
Can’t understand why heroin so popular. Really taking off here at the moment. Guess I felt a bit more relaxed, I don't know. Not enough to warrant use of disgusting needles. **6/10**. (It would be a five but it gets a bonus point for the look of shock and horror on Aziraphale’s face)

**Drug 8: Ketamine**.  
Notes: Just stupid. Gave me panic attacks. Took me six thousand years to build up this reputation of being cool, calm and collected. Shattered in five minutes of wailing, ketamine induced hysteria; spinning about on the floor like a top with the string yanked out of it. Got a few more slaps on the face for all the good it did. **0/10** Ketamine and cannabis can just go and shack up in some sad little cliff side dwelling for all I care.

**Drug 9: Methamphetamine**  
Notes: Speed, apparently. Now I’m not just going too fast for Aziraphale, but also for_ myself_. Shit is _lethal._ Could be injected but I was able to get away with just smoking it this time around. Could have run a marathon around old London town and still had enough energy in the reserves for an additional cross country. Couldn’t sit still for five minutes. Probably good for folks wanting to dance the night away without getting tired and falling asleep drooling in their dates laps. Heard the come down is a bitch, however. Luckily not something of which I need participate. Once again, can’t see the appeal. What have humans got against relaxing anyway? **5/10**

  
“It’s a moot point, anyway.” Aziraphale was later saying, as they shared a cigarette out in the courtyard to the rear of his shop. A dim light hummed intermittently from above the doorway, circled lazily by one mildly curious moth. “You can’t understand the carry over effects of drug addiction simply by sampling the wares and making notes on your experiences.”

Crowley picked up his wine glass from where it rested by his boot and took a sip. This here, why wasn’t _this_ simply good enough for the humans? He was exhausted by the evenings efforts and in spite of having healed himself between each ‘puddle’ his brain still felt far more foggy and ache riddled than he would otherwise prefer.

“So, what you’re suggesting is that I form a longstanding addiction so as I can appropriately empathize with the humans I’m to be tempting?”

Aziraphale looked positively mortified by the thought. “What? No dear boy, that’s not what I’m suggesting at all. Bad enough with these bloody things.” He took a pointed drag from the cigarette before reaching out to tap ash into the tray set aside his outdoor table. “No. Rather what I was suggesting is that you perhaps conduct a little research. Outside of the lacing of your own body with all the disgusting concoctions I can only imagine some of _your lot_ were responsible for.”

“Oh, for Satan’s – Look, how many times do I have to tell you, that you don’t give the human’s enough credit.” Crowley tapped a finger against his own temple, smoke from the lit cigarette curling up around the angular lines of his face. “They’re crafty buggers. The makings of the majority of their misery and destruction are self-taught. We just guide them along a little faster, if anything. A demon wasn’t responsible for creating drugs, that was all the humans doing. They get bored like anyone. Get creative with ways so as to try and keep themselves amused.”

Aziraphale _hrmmed_ thoughtfully at this, taking another somewhat hypocritical little puff from his cigarette. “It rings true.” He conceded. “And what I was going to suggest, is that you might in fact speak with a human who is experiencing drug addiction themselves. Get some perspective as the how and the why the addiction has consumed their life. The difficulties they encounter as a result of said addiction.”

Crowley’s lip twisted at the thought. “What? Scour the alleyways and blind corners of London’s backstreets asking addicts to pony up their life story? No thanks. Been slapped enough to last me a while.”

“You were _grinding me into a bookshelf_.” Aziraphale said between clenched teeth. He considered himself a rather good sport for having said nothing of the embarrassing exchange until now and had the courtesy still to move on from it _tout de suite_. (One French phrase he ever so smugly managed to recall and that was mainly as a result of a song having been written about it). “Anyhow, what I was _going_ to suggest is that you pop by next Tuesday morning. Come by about 8:00am.”

“Didn’t think you opened that early.”

“Well, I don’t. Not officially. There’s a young woman who comes to visit and I open early so as to accommodate her.” And then, because Crowley was looking at him with some amusement, added: “Oh, it’s not what you’re thinking. She’s homeless. Addicted to that awful heroin you tried earlier. Life spiralled out of control some years ago.” He shrugged one grey cardigan draped shoulder lightly. “Tuesday is usually the day she’s coming down. I give her a safe space to do so. She comes in other times. To warm up. Wash her clothes. Take a shower.”

“She feels safe enough to do that?” Crowley asked, unsurprised but curious all the same.

“She assumes I’m a gay man. Never bothered to correct her on it, obviously.” Aziraphale took up his own wine glass from the table and sipped from it in a manner which would have convince a blind man of his supposed homosexuality. “The important thing is that she feels _safe_ a while. She tells me sometimes she’s too frightened to sleep on the streets. People steal from her. Or…” He gave the demon a sad, meaningful look. “You know.”

“Take advantage of her.”

Aziraphale nodded, lips pursed together in that little way he had when something deeply upset him. Crowley was not so far removed himself. He spent a great deal of his time giving thanks to whomever it was what required said thanks that his earthly duties did not entail the tempting or inciting of rape. It was a heinous act, one which he vocally abhorred and would have possessed the not often witnessed courage to refuse if he had been asked to encourage such a thing.

“Humans can be bloody awful to each other, can’t they?” He murmured, taking a low, doleful pull on his cigarette.

“It’s a sad world sometimes.” Aziraphale agreed, grinding out the filter of his cigarette and leaving its extinguished carcass in the base of the ash tray. He sipped from his wine again and cast his gaze, unseeing really, towards the stars. It was a relatively clear night and the formations were bright. “Anyway, if you like, perhaps you might pop in on the Tuesday morning and I’ll introduce you. Try as not to frighten her, if you could be so kind.” Crowley curled his lip at the mere mention of the word. “_You can be kind_ where a traumatized young lady is concerned, my dear. And if not kind then at least… not... intimidating.”

“When have_ I_ ever been intimidating?” Crowley asked, thinking he must have been sick on the day Aziraphale had made this particular observation. He often felt about as intimidating as a naked toddler covered in marmite brandishing a half gnawed upon crust of wholemeal bread.

“You can be very direct.” Aziraphale said. “And oftentimes curt. Not to mention,” He pointed at his own eyes before flicking his fingers out towards Crowley. “You make very strong eye contact.”

“I’ve got glasses on half the time!” Crowley said defensively.

“You can tell from the angle of your face when you’re staring at someone! And if you stare at her like that, then she’s likely to start feeling self-conscious.” Aziraphale gave a rather unnecessary ruffle of his entirely unruffled cardigan. “It’s bad enough when you do it to me and I’m used to it. ...Somewhat.”

If he was being entirely truthful with himself, Aziraphale was not at all accustomed to the intensity of Crowley’s eye contact. Even after all these years it still somehow managed to rattle him, make him doubt whatever it was that he might have had previously stone hard convictions concerning. It had only gotten worse following the incident within the church in 1941, where Crowley had rescued both him and his much beloved first editions from the hands of Nazi soldiers. Aziraphale had always known that he felt love for Crowley (angels were after all replete with love) but he hadn’t known until that very moment that he was in fact _in_ love with him.

That was the main reason of which he found eye contact with Crowley so difficult to maintain. To say nothing of the way in which his eyes seemed to drill right on through your skin and sear against the very marrow of your bones. Such a metaphorical undressing was far too much to expect a frightened young woman with trust issues to deal with.

"Just... promise me you won't go putting anymore of this blasted nonsense into your body." Aziraphale said, turning and pushing the door back into the laundry open. "Especially not that ecstasy. What an absolute _nightmare _that was."

Crowley just about choked on his cigarette smoke in his rush to sputter his defence. "Excuse me! A demon could take offense at _that! _Far worse people to have grinding up on you in a bookshop. Should count yourself lucky."

"I should have you arrested for indecent assault is what I _should _be doing." Aziraphale tutted, nonetheless holding the door open for Crowley and waiting for him to extinguish his cigarette before following him inside. They spent the remainder of the night much as they had always done; drinking, bickering, recounting tales of times shared and times spent apart.

In six thousand years they had never bored of their routine. And it stood to reason that they never in fact would.

**~X~**


	2. A Favour.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whilst assisting Crowley with his research into human drug addiction, Aziraphale receives a request which challenges his very beliefs as an angel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Been a long time coming this update! I owe Ira_Dunfort a huge apology for the delay; my only excuse being that The Three Stages takes up so much of my time and energy! 
> 
> Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read, kudos and comment on the story. It’s always an unexpected treat and I’m very grateful to you all! 
> 
> This has expanded now to include three parts, as opposed to the two I had originally been planning. This chapter is a little more on the serious side than the previous one, but I hope folks enjoy all the same :)

**~X~**

* * *

**London Soho - 1967**

7:30 am was, by Crowley's estimations, a ghastly time of day.

Nobody had any business being up and about so early in the morning. Not since the invention of the automobile, anyway. Plenty of time to get to where you needed going and be very the comfortable in said going of.

Cars had heaters and music and doors and windscreen wipers. Horses had_ none_ of these things. AND they gave the old arse cheeks a fair to prominent knobbling, which hardly seemed a reasonable trade up. A car was far less likely to pitch you into the dirt, as well.

Bikes for that matter too. But Crowley could no more envision himself on a push bike than he could envision himself on a flying carpet. The prospect was a ludicrous one.

Plus... lycra... _bleurck._

Crowley had so far spent many the thousands of years being forced into the much maligned demographic of the early riser. He did not possess any romantic delusions as to how miserable those times had been. He was a demon what enjoyed sleep, and plenty of it. He also enjoyed warmth and the comforts which came from not being wrenched out of a billowing of warm blankets and foisted out onto a veritable carpet of frost and hail what lashed you at a belligerent, horizontal angle. 

It had been one of the main reasons he had persisted with long hair throughout the ages; kept the back of the neck warm.

In so saying, when Crowley arrived at Aziraphale's bookshop, at the ironically ungodly hour the angel had requested the pleasure of his company, the demon was not in the fairest of moods. Even whence greeted with a cup of coffee and cheese and bacon croissant, he remained about as frosty as the air outside, thawing out after a half hour of Aziraphale's placid conversation and a good nip of brandy to liven up his otherwise boring coffee.

The things a demon did for the sake of his job.

Or, more to the point, to satisfy his own insatiable curiosity.

It was a little after 8am when the bell above the doorway jangled. Aziraphale wiped down the corners of his mouth with an elegantly pressed napkin and rose from his seat with the sort of stringent poise what might have suggested his upper body was starched entirely from the waist up.

"That must be her." He said, by way of announcement. He followed on from this, by extending a finger curtly in Crowley's somnolent direction. "Heed what I said: Be courteous and _do _try so as to not frighten her away. There are so few places in which she can come and feel safe. I do not wish to narrow that field any the further."

Crowley gave a tired salute, having no interest in putting the wind up of any human what was already invariably nestled in the devil's clutches as was. It was hardly worth his pay grade. Not to mention that whilst he _was _the earthly envoy of Hell, he was not what many would consider to be a _mean _creature. Crowley often found that it was, most ironically, Aziraphale what could be world's meaner without any conscious effort.

Crowley remained seated; taking a gulp from his laced coffee and feeding a pinch of croissant into his mouth, as Aziraphale drifted towards the forefront of the store. It was a quiet morning, and the shop wasn't even officially open yet, but the angel had left the front door unlocked, specifically to facilitate the needs of his young charge. As such, Crowley was not required so as to go to any great strains to eavesdrop on their conversation:

"How fair you, my dear?" The angel queried, and even Crowley could not deny just how warm, welcoming and hospitable his tone was; in so few words alone.

"Been better." Came the response of a young woman. She sounded congested, as though she were fighting off a chest infection. She sniffed and Crowley heard her footsteps pass their way along the shelves to the left of him. "Anyone else 'ere?"

"A friend of mine." Aziraphale replied and the footsteps came to an immediate, grinding halt. "Oh no. Please don't be alarmed, my dear. He's an old friend. Just stopped by for a spot of breakfast. I assure you; you're quite safe. Would you care for something to eat? I have some fresh pastries what were delivered just this morning."

There was silence for some time following this (what Crowley took to be) amenable invitation. A chewed hunk of partway masticated pastry hung suspended in the gallows of his cheek. He waited, half suspecting that the frightened young woman would make tracks and it would be the last the well meaning angel would ever see of her.

And then: "S'it okay, if I have a shower first? Is that okay? Got some stuff needs washin' too... hate imposin' on ya like this..."

She sounded like she meant it, too. Crowley felt the edges of his demonic heart soften an infinitesimal touch. He considered humbleness to be an incredibly endearing trait. Too many humans (and immortals alike) were purposefully taken with the delusion that they were entitled to any and all things that they wished to attain and had little to no reason in being polite in the acquiring of said things.

It was an extremely off-putting characteristic (likely to have been a run-off from the still active influence of the Capital Vice Superbia) and one which appeared to be gaining traction ever the more affluently by the day. Hell would be pleased by this 'step on other's faces to get to where you're needing to get' mentality, nothing surer, but Crowley enjoyed it quite as much as he enjoyed a pebble in his boot. Which was to say; not at all.

"It's quite all right. I can take this into the laundry and I would be _more _than happy to run them through the washing machine after you've taken your shower." Aziraphale sounded almost _too _smarmy with this; as though he were purposefully putting on a performance for Crowley's benefit. Demonstrating to the demon just how it was that a proper angel was expected to behave. "But first; please allow me to introduce you to my companion. Right this way."

A moment later, Aziraphale appeared from between the shelves; a young woman drifting uncertainly along in his wake. A human what had plainly seen far the better days than that in which she was currently beleaguering.

She was on the diminutive side; scantly over five feet in total and looked to be very thin and exoskeletal under her profound layers of clothing. Clothing of which appeared to be so many the varying shades of colour what one might ascribe to increasingly water diluted offerings of gravy. Her dark hair was tucked in under a knitted hat and her nose was red from the cold. She wore gloves and boots what were clearly one or two sizes too large for her slender feet; she appeared to be kicking them out from way of her toes with every step she took.

She looked very small, very fragile and very, _very _frightened. She looked especially frightened of Crowley, who was doing his very best in this situation to appear non-threatening, approachable and (Satan-forbid) _friendly. _He never considered himself to be a particularly alarming specimen of a demon, but Hell only knew what this young human had encountered in her so far short, and plainly difficult life.

"Giselle, this is Anthony." Aziraphale might have gestured towards Crowley, but he was currently holding a rather hirsute duffle bag, from which trailing sleeves and fabric protruded like a prolapsed rectal cavity.

Crowley nodded, remaining seated so as to not potentially incite further fear from the young woman. He knew that some humans, particularly those with a history of trauma, could be skittish. Something he might normally have exploited, but it was in the best interests of work (and his respect for Aziraphale's wishes) that he averted this very thing he might otherwise have indulged.

"How you guys know each other?" 'Giselle' asked, keeping firmly ensconced behind Aziraphale's body, in such a way that Crowley found particularly touching. She obviously trusted him, and honestly; why shouldn't she? There wasn't a creature alive what presented less harm to a young female than the Principality Aziraphale. Unless you found an oversaturation of prodigal 'oozing' to be particularly threatening. Or you were attempting to purchase one of his books.

"We're lovers." Crowley proclaimed, thinking it a rather clever way to ease the young lady's consternations. Clearly, she considered Aziraphale to be harmless; largely by virtue of the fact that she had supposed him to be as gay as the day was long. The quickest and most effective means for her to relax around Crowley and, as a result, impart some information about her life circumstances, was to make her feel safe.

To say they were lovers automatically insinuated that Crowley was not a man (or, more specifically 'man-shaped creature') what was physically interested in the prospects (offered or otherwise) of the female form. It was the most straight forward means of getting this information across, as well. After all, it was hardly a normal thing to simply up and pronounce, with no manner of invitation nor context, that you were a human male what had a preference for being bent in half over the kitchen bench, and who was likely to gratuitously _judge_ the kitchen bench in the process of being verily and punitively taken against the substandard woodgrain Formica . People tended to find that sort of thing rather odd and the definitive definition of oversharing.

Aziraphale, it seemed, was clearly on board with that very sentiment and had taken to glaring unappreciatively at Crowley; clearly having no foresight into the demon's reasoning and instead seeming to take it as Crowley wanting to stir him in some way. Which was not an admittedly, uncommon occurrence.

"We are... absolutely _not!_" The angel sputtered helplessly, appearing ever the more put out by Crowley continuing to innocently smile at him. "He's just a friend! ... Hardly even _that, _really... rather more of an acquaintance who just... drifts in on the tides every once in a while and drinks everything in the liquor cabinet-"

"Babe, why you gotta be like this?" Crowley said, fluttering his hand about in a rather offensively stereotypical gay manner as he sipped from his coffee cup. He was enjoying himself immensely. "It's not against the law anymore, sweetheart. We're in private. We're over twenty-one. I mean, well..." He gestured at Aziraphale pointedly. "You're _definitely _over twenty-one. Where's the harm?"

Crowley was referring to the _Sexual Offences Act 1967, _which had passed on the 27th of July that very same year. He'd always thought it a very peculiar thing; because homosexual acts between men had existed throughout the long stretch of human history on earth and it was only in more modern times (especially in regards to the heavy handed implementation of Catholicism) that folks had started to get all antsy about it.

Statistically; far fewer homosexual men went to Hell than heterosexual men and that had never been as a result of who it was that they chose to share their bed with. More the likely pertaining to acts of murder, rape, long indulged lives of crime at the expense of others, all that usual stuff.

Aziraphale also found it to be a rather befuddling thing. As he had reasserted one particularly boozy night some twenty-years ago: "God couldn't give a hootenanny and a half as to who a human chooses to make the love what dares not speak its name. 'less of course it's a child... or'n animal... or someone who doesn't want it. Common sense really, isn't it?"

Crowley remembered nodding vigorously and then offloading an ever the more thoughtful gastric burp in agreement. A biological propensity to eschew common sense was, unfortunately, the generously lubricious oil what eased the ever downward trajectory of human beings into the mouth of Hell; what gaped with the impatient anticipation of a baby bird, eager for the regurgitated blurt of food from its mothers beak.

Crowley figured that much of the time the human males who persisted with the notion of 'buggery' being a jail-able offence, were simply terrified that they themselves might have enjoyed a finger being slipped in if given half a chance. Almost six thousand years of history was evidence enough to support this assertion. 

'Giselle' did not, however, seem at all concerned with any of this modern day malaise and gave Aziraphale a comradely smack to the back of the shoulder.

"You know ya don't gotta hide any of that stuff from me, mate." She said, smiling. Her teeth were a little chipped, but not in such bad condition from what Crowley could see. Musn't have been on the gear long. "I love pooves. Y'don't try and mess with me, for one. Which is a fuckin' relief." She reached across the table, unwinding her hand up from where it had been sheltered in the valley of her armpit and offered it to Crowley. They shook. "Nice to meet ye, Anthony. Yer fella here has been a right proper Godsend to me. Like a guardian angel."

"Yeah... he's an angel all right." Crowley said, scrunching his nose meaningfully at Aziraphale's purposefully poised and somewhat haughty features. "Nice to meet you too, young lady. Please, don't let me keep you."

"There's a clean towel waiting for you on the sink." Aziraphale said, who was finally starting to look slightly less annoyed than he had mere moments earlier. "Also there's a fresh bar of soap and some shampoo and conditioner, if you have need of it."

"Yer so nice to me. Thanks." Giselle turned on her heel and swayed her way over to Aziraphale's bedroom, disappearing inside and shutting the door behind her.

Crowley followed Aziraphale into the store offshoot, which housed the washing machine and the tumble dryer he had only just recently purchased. The angel had always been a little wary of them; as so many fires had been reportedly caused by the machines, but a new heat-sensing function meant that the chances of this were now drastically reduced. He still preferred to air-dry where possible, because it gave the clothes and fabrics a reportedly 'cleaner' smell and reduced allergenics where possible.

"Seems a nice girl." Crowley remarked, having had his fair share of encounters with drug addicts and, more recently, the unashamedly hostile folks what purveyed their wares to said individuals. Not a one had been nearly as amenable as the young lady to whom he had just been introduced. Most had in fact invited him to go forth and engage in the act of sexual intercourse with himself, in a tone what made the suggestion sound anything less than appealing.

"Oh, yes. Very nice girl." Aziraphale remarked, somewhat distracted as he proceeded to carefully empty out the contents of Giselle's bag onto his laundry bench. "Not a bad person. Doesn't discriminate, unfortunately. The addiction, I mean."

"You want to be careful there." Crowley warned. "Might be sharps in amongst the clothes."

"Hardly likely to cause me much damage if there were." Aziraphale said with a small smile. He continued to divide the clothing up, hardly looking at all concerned or embarrassed in stumbling across dirty underpants here and there. He did in fact, feed these into the washing machine first. "Besides; she's very responsible with disposing of her syringes. Haven't come across a single one, yet."

"Always a first time for everything." Crowley cocked his head as he heard, and equal parts felt, the water pipes groan to life through the walls of the old building. It seemed Giselle was having herself her shower. "How long you been doing this? Looking out for her, you know?"

Aziraphale shrugged non-committedly as he turned trousers and shirts inside out; apparently on the hunt for more underpants what were eluding him. "You know, I can't recall precisely... couple of months now? Found her asleep behind some of the shelves one morning. She'd wandered in sometime the previous afternoon, just looking for somewhere safe to rest her head a while. Figured a bookshop was one of the safer places to do it."

"You obviously did a _thorough _check of the shop before closing up for the night." Crowley said, in a tone about as close to scolding as the demon was capable. The angel looked at him, guiltily.

"Oh, I know, it was frightfully remiss of me." He said, understanding where the demon was coming from without further need of embellishment. They'd had such conversations before, of course. Not all creatures of Hell were amenable to an angel's continued presence (and, thusly interference) on earth as Crowley was. Such amnesty was extended by and large from Crowley's great love for Aziraphale, and a deep intrinsic desire to translate that love into acts what were considerably more expressive and carnal and naked.

In so few words; if a heavily drug afflicted young woman had managed to circumvent Aziraphale's 'astute' security measures, it stood to reason that a demon, what possessed inordinately greater means of magical powers and diabolic abilities would have a very good shot of driving their hellish shanks through the weak chinks in the angel's rather shoddily assembled suit of celestial armour.

Crowley did not want Aziraphale to go forgetting this anytime soon. Why, he would be at an absolute loss as to what to do with himself if something were to happen to the angel he had come to value as a great friend and perhaps an even greater love.

They might very well send someone far worse to chaperone his demonic activities on earth. Like _Michael. _Bleurgh. He didn't fancy trying to dodge this one again. Been too close for comfort that first time.

"Luckily for you, it was just a drug stuffed young woman and not one of my lot." Crowley reminded, giving the angel a very cool, curt look over his sunglasses. The intensity of which was somewhat dulled by the fact that he looked every bit like a poor-man's Beatles impersonator; even whence draped in a black velvet jacket which was very likely an exact magical replicant of that which was worn by Ringo himself. "Next time you might find yourself eating Hell-fire. Check round all your shelves before going to bed. Put a spell up to detect demonic presences. I'm not the only one who can turn into a creepy-crawly, you know."

"Yes, yes. I know. There's no need to badger me." Aziraphale frowned as he loaded powder into the washing machine, leaving it switched off whilst Giselle was showering. He turned now, directing that frown into the demon's face and set a hand curtly against the jut of his hip. "Another thing; was it absolutely necessary to insinuate to the young woman that you and I are... _carnal _with one another?" He looked so intensely flummoxed by the very thought that it took the tightening of every individual muscle in Crowley's body to keep him from laughing out loud. "I mean... goodness knows what the poor girl must be thinking."

"I imagine she is wondering just which one of us is the _bardash _in the bedroom." Crowley said, winking over the frame of his sunglasses. And, because Aziraphale did not obviously understand what the term referred to, added: "I just figured it was the simplest, most authentic means of getting her to relax around me. You said she seems to feel safe with you, because she assumes that you're a gay man. If she thinks I'm gay too, she's more the likely to feel at ease around me, don't you think? And it's hardly good acting if I just blurt out, 'Oh, by the way, I love cock!' without any sort of provocation. Probably only make her more suspicious."

"As unnecessarily crude as that is, you do have a point." Aziraphale admitted, making small piles of all Giselle's assorted, affiliate clothing items on the bench top. "But what if she..." His cheeks had gone a soft shade of pink and he was going to great strains to avoid making eye contact with Crowley. "I mean... do we need to... _act _as though we are lovers?"

Crowley stared glibly back at him. "What, you mean like... have sex on the dining room table in front of her, or something?" He snorted, as Aziraphale fumbled his grip on a jumper and was forced to reef it up off of the floor. "I'm kidding! Badness sake, we hardly need to put on a performance piece or anything. Just talk to me like you normally would. Most human couples are naturally discreet in front of guests, after all. Hardly need to prove it by sticking our tongues in each others mouths."

"Well... thank the Lord for small mercies." Aziraphale muttered, having of course no capacity to gaze into the future and discover that this was an act he was rather the glad God had not seen fit to bestow a small mercy upon. "Anyway, if you're going to start asking her questions about her own life, might I suggest offering her a cigarette or some such thing and going and having a chat with her in the courtyard. Offered me up a lot of information, request free, about her life, whilst we were having a smoke together."

"Right you are." Crowley said. He was never short on cigarettes in those days. He and Aziraphale both in fact smoked during that time and had for many the thousand years prior. The health effects of cigarettes had been a point of serious debate in human society for the past two decades and even though these were hardly the likely to affect an angel and a demon, it was something of which an angel could hardly continue to comfortably indulge if it were to become an immoral, harm-inducing vice.

A fact Aziraphale was greatly struggling with, as he enjoyed smoking and, after so many eons of doing so, was more than a little addicted to the practice.

_'Such is the subversive nature of temptation', _he had remarked in 1958, his round, soft face pinched into a rictus of distaste as he sucked smog back from the burning cylinder which he was now being forced to accept was an enemy in disguise. _'I must say; you demons ever so delight in taking the fun out of things.'_

It wasn't demons who took the fun out of things, of course, but the simple reality of the human condition and the ever progressive steps taken into the future. Constant discovery, learning, researching and the like. But Crowley felt in this instance that it hadn't been worth arguing with Aziraphale over, as the poor thing was finding it increasingly difficult to come to terms with the inevitable foreclosure of one of his more favoured indulgences. Nit picking his near constant propensity to heap responsibility onto the writhing, bug festooned scalps of the demonic populace, was hardly likely to soothe his doldrums any.

Following Giselle's shower, Crowley took Aziraphale's advice and invited her out to the courtyard to share a smoke with him. She appeared very eager, having no remaining cigarettes of her own (as Aziraphale had correctly surmised) and was happy to put off eating breakfast a few minutes longer.

Whilst Aziraphale busied himself with the washing of Giselle's few earthly possessions, Crowley made himself busy in the furthering of his own diabolical research; namely by attempting to engage the young woman in rather the intimate and personal details pertaining to her descent into addiction. He was surprised to find that he was not in fact required to dig at all deeply, nor skilfully, so as to encourage her to speak of such matters. Within three short puffs of her cigarette, she was opening up to him with about as much ease as a pre-schooler extolling the virtues of owning a pet tortoise during their allotted show and tell time.

Crowley had been preparing himself for the sort of tragic tale of woe and tribulation what seemed a near consistent staple of those humans what had succumbed to an addictive lifestyle. Most readily associated with a misspent youth, be-speckled with distant and or abusive parents, a controlling or domineering ex-partner, the general feeling of freedom and indulgence what had swept through England in the post-war era in much the way of a cosy, post-coital buzz (so he could only imagine) encouraging folks to ascribe little importance to practices what fed into that rapidly developing mindset of 'free-love'.

He got none of that. Giselle, by her own admission, had lived a fairly privileged life. She had gone to a good school, her parents had been loving and supportive, she had siblings whom she adored and whom loved her very much and she'd had plans to work as a teacher when she graduated. (Crowley discovered that was, in fact, barely nineteen years old. The effects of the drugs and life on the streets, appeared to have significantly aged her, such that he would have guessed her to be more likely in the realm of her mid-twenties, rather than her teens).

Illicit drugs had simply been a thing what had been making the rounds in her social group. It had started out innocuously enough with Crowley's brand-new least favourite drug, marijuana and had sort of spiralled out of control from there.

There had been a boyfriend. He had been the first to have injected Giselle with heroin, in fact. This was where she believed that the decline of her old life had taken a steep dive into a ditch which she could not envision herself ever being able to crawl out of. She could not reasonably fathom a life in which the drug was not a part; much like a crutch into which she could lean her weight and take the pressure off of all other things what brought her pain and stress.

When Crowley enquired as to _why _precisely she had continued to take heroin in the first place, Giselle said something which he found particularly intriguing:

"Made the sadness and the numbness in my head go away for a while." She stated, ever so matter-oh-factly; her chipped fingernails scratching the inside sleeve of her shirt. Aziraphale had provided the clothes, what Crowley supposed had been hers in the first place, because they swamped her tiny body in a way what only made her look the more intensely vulnerable than she did already. "Started feelin' shit with it all when I was in high school. Finding it hard to get up in the morning. Felt crap all the time, like everythin' was an effort. Don't feel like that on the gear. Just feel happy for a while. Just takes a bit out of your day, you ain't feeling like cryin' your eyes out all the time."

She gave Crowley a very intense look then; one which made the demon feel strangely small and under far the more scrutiny than he had ever felt when rolling up into Hell to give a presentation pertaining to his current diabolic projects. Which was a Heaven of a feat for a little human to have accomplished; given that Lord Beelzebub was in possession of an eternally bored yet equally patented glare what could render holes through the sides of an armoured war vessel with minimal effort.

"Ya gotta get that, yeah? There are things _you _do, what make ya feel better. You do 'em, right? We all do things what make us feel good. Ain't no human what doesn't."

Crowley wasn't a human, but he could nonetheless appreciate where Giselle was coming from. Yes, all earth based creatures were guilty of indulging those things which brought them pleasure. There wasn't a creature alive what did not ascribe to the 'God-given' right to feel 'good'. Crowley was, and never had been, an exception to the rule.

He enjoyed a good drink, or twenty. He liked to smoke. He liked to drive fast, watch a good movie, sleep, dine at a fine restaurant and yes, even interfere with himself on occasion.

He liked to watch Aziraphale eat. Doing so wrought them both a certain amount of pleasure, which was not so different to the shared experience of sex, the demon rationalized.

Crowley would have liked to have had sex; if the offer had ever been on the table. He was, of course, only interested in sex what would have included Aziraphale and not that which might have involved humans; specifically service people, who were known for their lustful and lascivious nature.

The demon imagined that life on board this little floating rock would have been a great deal less enjoyable, if he was not in fact permitted to indulge these paltry pleasures from time to time. Taking them away, would be akin to something of a 'loss', to which a certain degree of mourning would naturally be attributed.

He imagined then Aziraphale being called back to military rotation in Heaven, such as had once almost come to pass back in the 1800's. The thought dropped a sharp, cold slab of fear hard into the bowels of Crowley's belly, as though driven in by the obstinate heel of a punitive boot.

The thought of being suddenly deprived of the creature he loved so dearly, whose own wellbeing he was so dependent on preserving, simply for the peace and enjoyment it brought him in turn, was terrifying. An _unthinkable _thought really. You might very well have gone and asked a human how they would feel about giving up oxygen for the foreseeable future.

To Crowley, life on earth could not continue on for him, if Aziraphale was not a part of it. It was as simple and as shamefully disabling, as that.

He felt he understand the nature of addiction a little more clearly now. It was a life lived where an individual had grown accustomed to their being a particular 'something' what allowed them to see out their days without a dissonant screaming voice bellowing from the corners of their mind. 

Giselle finished her cigarette and went inside, leaving Crowley with his thoughts a while. He hadn't expected it to make as much sense to him as it had, and he was a little thrown by it.

Perhaps because he too, was an addict. There was a desperate, needing want inside of him; one which compelled him to seek out the angel, to whom he was paradoxically tied for all eternity and keep him close. No other entity could possibly fathom the enormity of their burden; the loneliness and inordinate strangeness of their situation, better than they themselves. They had been driven together by virtue of this common interest and could empathize with one another in a way that was simply impossible for anyone else in either the Heaven's or the Hell plains to appreciate.

Dependency... addiction. Little difference, when boiled down to brass tacks.

* * *

Crowley ground out his cigarette and stepped back up over the concrete stoop and wended his way through the machine warmed room of the laundry and back out into the shop proper. He happened upon a surprisingly stern conversation what Aziraphale was having with Giselle. Neither of them looked to be particularly pleased with the other, which was surprising for Crowley.

He was accustomed to Aziraphale indulging his less fair of moods with him and him alone. As he often said, 'a demon was an exception to the civil standard' and rather than piss him off, Crowley found himself resultantly pleased by Aziraphale's transparency. It meant, in far less eloquent a term, that the angel was being his more authentic self when spending time with the demon.

"I wouldn't even ask, but-"

"Young lady, you _know _our agreement." Aziraphale cut Giselle's appeal off sharply, arms crossed over his chest and positioned, somewhat to Crowley's amusement, between her and the cash register. "You are always welcome here. You are welcome, in fact, to anything in the refrigerator. You are welcome to sleep in my bed, you are welcome to a hot bath or a shower and you are welcome to my time and my friendship and my support." He held a finger up in a curt remonstration that Crowley recognized all too well from it being most usually directed at him. "But I draw the line at providing you with money."

Crowley was a clever creature, but it did not require a genius to figure out what was going on. Aziraphale was not a cheap person, and it was every bit true as to suggest that he would have happily shucked the shirt from his back and wrapped it about your own shoulders if he supposed you might have use of it. That was part and parcel of what made an angel an angel, after all.

But Giselle was an addict. She very clearly had nothing in the way of money at that time and as such, would not have been able to purchase the drugs of which her body was craving.

"It's just... I'm in trouble, Mr. Fell," Giselle had taken to scratching at the crooks of her inside elbows as though a nest of ants had spawned within the recess and were burrowing their way through her veins. "I need to... to pay someone off. He gave me the stuff, but I... I didn't have the money at the time. I'm in debt."

This had most definitely caught Aziraphale's ear and his arms unwound from about his chest like a python what had successfully constricted its dinner into a passive state of unconscious compliance. His brows, steeped firmly in the centre, rose sharply so that the corners of his gentle eyes creased with concern.

"You're in trouble with your..." He struggled to find an appropriate word with which to describe Giselle's dealer and failed. " - the uh... the person who... sells you the, uh..." He gestured somewhat lamely towards the girls arms; which she continued to pick at as though mining for something of indeterminate value beneath the surface.

Giselle nodded, the whites of her eyes so luminous it made her look a little mad. "It's not... I wouldn't ask for money from you to score, Mr. Fell. You've been good to me. Wouldn't ask that. Ain't right. It's just..." She shrugged helplessly. "I think he's... he's gonna hurt me. And I don't know who else to go to. Ain't no one else gonna help. Just tell me to call the police. Get help. All that."

"And you can't?" Aziraphale asked earnestly. And then, because Giselle was looking at him with some confusion, added: "Get help, I mean? I... I could... I could go with you... to one of those places, where they..." He glanced helplessly towards Crowley, who blinked at him, just as uncertain and uncomfortable with all of this as he was. "Well, you know. Help you... come off..."

"I'm not goin’ to one of them places." The girl shook her head, lips pressed together tightly. Like a toddler who had been asked to do something they had no intention of doing and who was overtired and sick of the world to boot. Giselle might have been a nearly grown woman, but in that moment, she was reduced to little more than an obstinate child. "I'm not. I don't wanna come off of it. Not yet. I ain't ready. I just need to... I just need ta get this guy off of my back first and then..."

"Then perhaps you might consider it?" Aziraphale asked hopefully, and Crowley felt particularly sorry for the angel in that moment. Of course he would still be clinging to the hope that he could facilitate change in the poor girls circumstances. He couldn't see that she was in no place yet so as to be approaching the concept of quitting. Crowley could hear it in the tone of her voice; could sense it in her body language.

"Maybe... at some point." Giselle said, feeding into the well-intentioned angel's hope. "I just... I need to clear the debt. Start fresh, ya know?"

Aziraphale sighed, turning the gold ring about on his pinkie finger; such as he always did when he was lost in thought. Crowley half expected him to say no, as it was such a morally questionable thing, but the angel then went ahead and surprised him by asking:

"How much do you owe this... gentleman?"

Giselle told him the amount. Crowley whistled. It was a considerable debt for those days. And a considerable amount of heroin what had so far gone unpaid for. No wonder she was in trouble.

"I'm sorry. But I'm not about to go putting the money in your hand." Aziraphale said firmly, and then, because the girl looked fit to protest, added: "What I _will _do, is come with you and pay your... acquaintance the amount directly."

Giselle looked completely terrified by the thought; much like a teenage boy whose mother had offered to chaperone at the high school dance. "That ain't a good idea. He might think I narked on him, or some'ink. Probably won't talk to me I rock up with someone..." She gestured sort of lamely towards Aziraphale's very smart, very proper and extremely old-fashioned attire. "Well... someone who looks like you."

"I will dress casually." Aziraphale asserted and Crowley was forced to stifle a snort, for he hadn't known Aziraphale to have dressed in a would be 'casual' fashion since the Roman times. Once there had been enough variations of clothing from among which to choose, Aziraphale had made good and certain to doff himself in the smartest, most expensive, oftentimes most garish of attire; often a good fifty or one hundred years out of date, to boot.

To this very day, he still persisted in wearing the same vest and overcoat that he had purchased sometime back in the early 1800's. The fact that it was frayed and discoloured about the edges was by no means a dissuading factor where the angel was concerned and he took immense and loving care of these two particular garments.

"I'll uh... look, I'll help out." Crowley said, shrugging as Aziraphale shot him a look which suggested he was by no means appreciative of the offer. "Come on. I know the streets better than you. I can help ya dress the part. Make sure ya don't get mugged. Or beaten up, ya know?"

Aziraphale thought this more than a little rich when coming from Crowley; a demon he had been primarily responsible in protecting throughout the many thousands of years of their acquaintance from any number of beatings, lashings, slaps, boots and quarterings. It was the angel what was able to hold his own in a fight, whereas Crowley, more often than not, simply folded in on himself like a piece of Lalique.

Giselle, much to Aziraphale's disgust, seemed however comforted by the offer. "Actually... yeah, yeah ya know... that might work. I could... go talk to the guy, get you both to wait round the corner and then bring him over and..." She turned back towards Aziraphale, gnawing at her dry bottom lip; splintered through by painful looking cracks. "Would that... that be okay?"

"So far as these matters might be referred to as 'okay'." Aziraphale murmured, feeling a small prickle from his angelic biorhythms for having indulged his bad mood. "We can sort it out tonight, if that makes you comfortable. In the meantime, might I suggest you have something to eat and get yourself a decent sleep. You need to get your strength up."

When Giselle had eaten her very modest fill and taken herself into Aziraphale's bedroom for a nap, the angel deposited himself down at the dining table with a heavy, world weary sigh. Crowley topped up his coffee cup, doing an extremely poor job in not letting his amusement seep out onto his face.

"Well, aren't _you _the beneficent one."

Aziraphale did not rise to the bait. "I'm an angel. It's to be expected, of course."

"If you weren't an angel, would you have offered to help?" Crowley asked. He was always intrigued by such things. "Or do you only do so because it is 'expected' of you?"

"I would like to think that I would still help, regardless of whether it was 'expected of me', or not." Aziraphale replied, honestly. He leant back in his chair, sipping from his coffee with a look on his face that the demon was not at all accustomed to seeing. Somewhat as bitter as the finely ground brew of which they were currently partaking. "I can't imagine that every finite aspect of my personality is so intrinsically wended with the constraints of my biology. Take yourself, in place of example."

"What about myself?" Crowley asked, dangerously. He had an idea as to where this was heading and would rather have liked to cut it off soundly at the pass.

Aziraphale, of course, took no notice of the blatant hint what permeated the demons tone. "You're a demon. Yet you are capable of great acts of kindness-"

"Watch your language."

"- Acts of which are definitively circumspect to your hereditary nature. Be that there is precious little personal freedom to be enjoyed in both Heaven and Hell, we are still capable of exercising some individual choice in our day to day lives." Aziraphale sipped from his coffee in what Crowley thought to be a somewhat self-satisfied manner. "We are not simply two-dimensional constraints of cardboard, at days close. Nor are we machines guided by a universal program. Well, of course there is a proper and improper means of doing things; that's just how the universe works. There is right, and there is wrong."

"But that's all just a matter of earthly perspective." Crowley protested, feeling that these were not the sorts of philosophical conversations what were appropriate over a pot of coffee and half-eaten bagel. "You and I both know that 'good' and 'evil' are just names given to different sides. A means so as to make sense of it all. It's like how the Eskimo people have got... a hundred odd different names for ice and snow, depending on what state the stuff is in. Snow what's melting, snow what's only just fallen, snow what's been packed into a ball-"

"That's called a snowball." Aziraphale stated. "There is a name for it in the English language as well, I think you will find. Most languages, in fact."

"You're missing the point." Crowley said, with the look of one who was becoming more the annoyed, for the unnecessary detraction. "Good is just a word for a thing what ultimately bestows a sense of peace and wellbeing and happiness. Doesn't always mean it's innately 'good', now does it? A murderer probably feels all those things when they commit a murder. Makes them feel 'good'. Doesn't mean it's good by another's reckoning, does it?"

"Now, hold on just a moment-"

"Just like taking drugs, eh?" Crowley continued to steamroll ahead. "Makes a person feel 'good' while they're doing it. Probably does the dealer some 'good' to have the poor schmucks money in their pocket. In so saying, look what 'good' has come out of those things you can only define as being _truly _evil. Take what the Nazi's did back in the war. Lot of messed up stuff. But it ended up progressing medical science by so many hundreds of years, because they did the things what everyone else refused to."

"With good... with _reason!" _Aziraphale exclaimed, setting down his coffee cup with disgust. "What the Nazi's did was _abhorrent _by _anyone's _reckoning! The complete lack of regard for human rights and dignity! The gas chambers, what they _did _to those poor, innocent children!"

"Hey, don't round on me like I was the one conducting the whole ugly affair." Crowley said, defensively. "I turned down the job. That's why they sent Sonnillion. Only too happy to turn the world inside out on Hell's behest."

"Don't remind me." Aziraphale replied, with the sort of tart expression best replicated by a baby what was discovering a slice of lemon for the first time. "Heaven _apparently _supposed me to have not been 'up to the task' of dealing with a demon of such 'great renown'." He gave an offended sniff; the point of which he was about to refer being every bit a sore one, still. "Sent that _Muriel _instead."

"_Muuuriel." _Crowley drawled, commiserating. He remembered the Dominion Muriel all too well. An overly pious, infuriatingly saccharine sort; even by Heaven's standards. If Muriel had been a human in attendance at a peace gathering, she would have been the one sitting cross legged and bare foot on the grass, a purple flower painted on her breast, a headband squeezing the common sense out of her forehead and an out of tune guitar perched between her hands. "Proper pain in the arse. She would have liked that marijuana stuff, is my guess. Such a preachy little thing, wasn't she?"

"_Was." _Aziraphale said, in that dramatic, purposeful way what served to segue into the point he could have simply gone and made without all the unnecessary build up. "No one knows what happened to her. Came to earth, dealt her dealings in the Great War and then-" He raised both hands inconclusively. "Poof. Gone."

Crowley grinned, anticipating the reaction he was momentarily due to receive. "Perhaps she and Sonnillion ran afoul of one another, fell in love and buggered off."

"What a thought." Aziraphale demurred, somewhat the unexpectedly, though more the intriguingly as he sipped once more from his now lukewarm coffee.

There was silence a while; fractured intermittently by the soft snores of Giselle from the room next door.

"I can pay the money, you know?" Crowley said, at length. He had taken off his glasses, so as to gift Aziraphale the full, unfiltered focus of his attentions. "Giving money to a drug dealer seems more of a diabolic deal than an angelic one."

"I'll be helping the poor girl remove herself from a desperate situation. I'm certain that the powers to be can appreciate that." Aziraphale sighed, reaching over to appropriate the last piece of croissant off of Crowley's plate and slipping it between his teeth. "Even if I am putting money into the hands of a human what makes their way through life by preying on the vulnerable."

"Done worse in the name of the 'arrangement', I'm sure." Crowley said with a sly grin. An insinuation to which the angel finally saw fit to take some modicum of offense.

"Really. Must you take such pleasure in tormenting me?"

"I suppose it is safe to assume that I 'mustn't'. And yet here we are."

Silence dropped between them once more. Aziraphale had taken again to fiddling with his ring; spinning it first one way and then the other. Crowley observed his distracted machinations, one slender brow slowly arching into being over the frame of his glasses.

“Stop dithering.” He said, paying no mind to the pointless look of surprise Aziraphale went to the effort of concocting. “If there’s something you want to ask; _ask.”_

Fine lines had run through the angels soft face, such that it resembled a tissue what had been scrunched between belligerent fingers. It was enough to assure Crowley that whatever was on the angels mind was of immense and genuine concern to him. This wasn’t simply a matter of him banding pretence on the proviso that it was what was proper and expected of an Angel.

“You’re, uh...” He closed his eyes; looking momentarily pained. Crowley sat up straighter in his seat, intrigued in spite of himself. “You’re being careful, of course? With the, uh...” He flicked a finger vaguely towards the coffee pot. “The, um... Holy water?”

Crowley knew better than to express amusement. This was a sensitive topic for Aziraphale; one which had seen them fall out of touch for over a century. 

“Course.” He replied. “Got it all locked up. Crack only in the case of emergency. All that.”

“I very much hope that is _all_ it is for.” Aziraphale said gravely, picking up his coffee cup and sipping once more from the cooling contents. Crowley may have said something in response to this, but the look on the angels face said all too clearly that there was no need so as to continue forwards with the conversation. 

Crowley was not the only one what was battling an addiction. A trembling had lain siege to Aziraphale’s celestial spirit; one of which he would forever find impossible to calm or to quell.

The angel had but a brief glimpse into what a world without Crowley might have been like. He did not care for it. Not one bit.

This was a fear what would serve as a constant companion to Aziraphale for many years more to pass. The ever present, soul rendering thought that every meeting with Crowley may in fact be their very last.

_Love_, he thought with ever the greater and more ironic sense of bitterness, _is the most addictive drug of them_ all. 

* * *

**~X~**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I’m aiming to have the third part out much sooner than I did this addition, which shouldn’t be too hard, given that I have a bit more time lately. 
> 
> Thanks as usual to everyone who stopped in to take a read. If you would like to comment, kudos, chat or ask any questions, you are more than welcome but please don’t feel any pressure to do so. The story is here for you guys and I’m happy to share it :) 
> 
> Wishing you all the most lovely and happiest of New Years! Be safe in your adventures and I look forward to seeing you in 2020! 
> 
> With all my infernal love,
> 
> ~Madammortis~ xxx ooo


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